Last month we had a contest and asked the Fstoppers Community to submit their best photos in five different categories. The winners of each category would win their choice of three Fstoppers Flash Discs or one free tutorial from the Fstoppers Store. We were very impressed with all of the talent from the community and were delighted to see such a wide spectrum of images in each category. We spent a great deal of time looking over each category, and after much deliberation, we have chosen one lucky winner from the five categories of Fashion, Landscape, Wedding, Glamour, and Portrait.

It is not something we do often, but shooting portraits in the rain can be a great way to give your images a different look that captures the eye. This excellent video tutorial will show you how to light and shoot compelling portraits in the rain.

Shooting for Billboard Magazine would undoubtedly prove exciting for any photographer, but especially so if it was your first assignment since the global lockdown began. This is the story of how one photographer completed a portrait shoot for the renowned publication, taken in the back garden of the subject’s home.

Beauty photography can be a great chance to balance careful, precise lighting and to work on really perfecting precise retouching. This fantastic video will show you the process behind lighting, shooting, and editing this fantastic editorial beauty photo.

Cooperative of Photography has brought us this slick little video that gives us a taste of the evolution of camera technology from the past 200 years condensed down into a sub-two minute demonstration. Austrian photographer Leo Rosas executes this project with a single model and 11 portraits, each representing a significant milestone in the development of photographic capture tools starting with the pinhole camera obscura, all the way to the modern cell phone.

Ed Keating, Pulitzer Prize-winner, career photographer of over thirty years and mentee and friend of Robert Frank (the most celebrated American documentary photographer probably ever), is one of the most fascinating people I’ve ever met. I filmed and edited this exclusive Fstoppers interview, as his insight was just too good not to share. No matter what type of photographer you are, I’m sure you can all take something of value away from this video interview.

Did you know there was a beard and moustache growing challenge besides the MOVEMBER movement? Until today I had no clue! And after seeing some of these images, i'm suffering from Beard-Envy! Direct from The Beard Team USA website: "It’s time to start growing! The 2014 Just for Men World Beard and Moustache Championships® are invading Portland, Oregon on Saturday, October 25. Inside the spectacular, 3,000-seat Keller Auditorium in downtown Portland, hundreds of the world’s best “beardsmen” will put the art of facial hair on display in the most entertaining and creative competition to hit the Northwest."

A photograph that does not tell a story, is a lifeless picture – it’s a failure to capture the viewer and therefore, his heart. One single photograph can inspire a person if a photographer knows how to tell a good story. Because photographer Paul Choy wanted to find out the truth for himself behind media headlines, and because he wanted to tell the individual stories of each refugee, he set out for the refugees’ camps in Calais and Greece with his camera. The result is the ‘Faceless, Forgotten’ – a photo essay and a documentary about the struggles of refugees.

In this quick-and-easy tutorial, Howard Pinsky teaches you how to create the ring light effect in your subject's eyes using Adobe Photoshop. Applying a custom shape, layer styles and blending tweaks, Pinsky demonstrates an effective way to produce this reflection without using a physical ring light. Some experimentation with blending, size and effects will help you to create a realistic reflection that adds that extra point of interest to your photograph.

Including all of the person's head in your photograph is considered to be one of the basic rules of portraits. Clipping off the top of someone's head is considered a rookie mistake. However, I want you to consider taking a different approach to that old standard.

You might think that creating enveloping wraparound light requires multiple sources, but it can actually be done with just a single source. This fantastic video tutorial will show you how to create such a portrait using only a single light and a small home studio.

For a photographer to continually grow and shape their portfolios, a test shoot is the most ideal way of creating a style. Test shoots ought to happen at every stage of your career if you want to grow, and find new challenges. For those wanting to enter the commercial arena for photography, get into the habit of testing.

Sometimes it’s the simplest things that help you appreciate your spare time. When you’re constantly driven to create, not having a personal project stewing can be agonizing the way nails to a chalkboard stab at more than just your ear drums.

Despite the incredibly strict lockdown rules in his native Cape Town, one photographer is adapting to quarantine restrictions by utilizing his underwater equipment in order to take high-quality bird and wildlife pictures in his back garden.

Approaching people on the street and asking for a portrait can feel uncomfortable — both for you as a photographer and for the person you’d like to photograph. Watch how one street photographer uses his experience to get some fantastic images.

Have you ever opened an old drawer and found an old picture of yourself, only to discover how funny you looked back then and how many insecurities you had? Merilee and her friend were remembering their teenage years. The conversation took them to the point where her friend wasn’t convinced that Merilee had any awkward years back then. This wasn’t true.

Now available on Netflix, "Shooting Robert King" goes behind the scenes of what it was like to be a documentary war photographer. You always hear and see images from the war but NEVER about what it's like to be thrown into it as a documentary photographer. At just 24, American photojournalist Robert King began his 15 year journey to follow his passion. Originally he set out to win a Pulitzer prize, but in the end found himself with a life changing experience.

I think we can all agree that in order to be successful, a photograph needs to connect with its viewers on an emotional level. That emotion could be awe, desire, sadness, longing, or any number of the plethora of human emotions, but there needs to be an emotion.

Elton John and his husband David Furnish have collected over 7,000 pieces of fine art photography over the past thirty years.

Do you think you've taken an incredible environmental portrait? Would you like to hear what we think about it? The next episode of Critique the Community will feature a selection of 20 environmental portraits which we will give feedback to. Make sure you do the following to be eligible to be chosen.

You've probably seen some pretty comical behind-the-scenes images of the kinds of positions photographers put themselves in just to get a shot. They climb trees, hang off cliffs, stand in the middle of rivers, lay down in the dirt, all just to frame up that perfect shot. Well there's almost always a reason behind the madness and sometimes those reasons end up having a much bigger impact than most people might expect. Sometimes it's about getting a really intriguing angle on a particular subject, but I find myself laying in the dirt quite a lot just so I can create a composition that carries more depth. Let's compare a couple different shots that can help make some sense of this.

Composition may be one of the most widely discussed artistic aspects in photography. In theory, the idea is simple. Putting it to work, particularly in motion arts, is easier said than done. Composition is one of the most important creative aspects of any filmmaking. Simply put, it is the act of defining the position, arrangement, and view of objects within the frame. The composition is, in effect, representing the point of view of your viewer and it will have a direct impact on how that viewer feels when they see it.

Family portraits are something that will almost always be in demand, but with multiple subjects to manage, with some of them often being unruly kids, it can take a lot to get a successful result. If you want to create better family portraits, check out this excellent video tutorial that will give five tips sure to help you improve.

When you look outside and see a gray sky, it might be tempting to feel discouraged at the uninteresting backdrop and plain light quality, but flat light can actually be some of the best light to work with as a photographer. If you would like to see why flat light is actually such a boon for portrait photographers, check out this helpful video tutorial that features an experienced photographer guiding students through building a shot.